A Student-Centered Approach and Mindset-Focused Pedagogical Approach for Entrepreneurship and Leadership

The ease and abundance of knowledge acquisition that is unparalleled in history, renders knowledge transition and practicing of skills in education insufficient. The importance of personal reflection and identity, i.e. the individual’s mindset, is increasingly important. Re-thinking educational approaches, to entrepreneurship and leadership in particular, is important since they are activities for which perfect information cannot be gathered. This paper introduces a new pedagogical approach that we will refer to as the MIND-methodology, which incorporates aspects of the individual’s mindset. The novel pedagogical approach includes four building blocks; theory practice, mindset and engagement-and-networking. The MIND-methodology is based on accepted pedagogical theories and known psychological aspects: social learning, communities of practice, and fixed and growth mindset. The novelty of the methodology lies in its clear student-centered approach and its focus on the student’s mindset. The methodology has been used in ongoing education in entrepreneurship and leadership over the course of about 10 years, and is gradually evolving. The results from applying the methodology show promising results for the main stakeholders; students and future employees. Students’ ranking years after graduation is unusually high and reveal that the curricula has provided life-long learning, the mindset activities are valued the most, and salaries and salary-increases provided by their eventual employers indicate that the students possess qualities sought after in today’s labor market.